


Render up your dead

by lynndyre



Category: Kingsman (Movies)
Genre: Character Death Fix, M/M, Presumed Dead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-29
Updated: 2016-08-29
Packaged: 2018-08-10 00:39:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7823473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lynndyre/pseuds/lynndyre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>The '62 Delmont burns warm in James' throat.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Render up your dead

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MeganMoonlight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MeganMoonlight/gifts).



The '62 Delmont burns warm in James' throat as he tracks the silhouette behind the door. Behind him there is a clink of metal, and he spins, bringing his gun up even as cold metal bites down through his shoulder and into his chest. His left hand blocks the killing momentum of her thigh, but hardly soon enough. In his right, the whiskey slides from his nerveless grip. James staggers back, and there is a wet, sucking noise as her blade pulls free.

"Gazelle? You fighting in there?"

"Someone trying to rescue our friend the professor." The woman lowers her leg a fraction but holds it poised, raised for a second stroke, and behind her James can see Professor Arnold staring in horror.

"Don't play with him too hard! We should talk." The lisping voice is hideously carefree. Why does he not come in?

"You want him alive to question? It might be difficult." 

Difficult indeed. His blood is- everywhere. James meets the woman's eyes, and sees all the practicality and sadistic instinct of a very, very good lieutenant. 

"Do what you can do. I want to know who's fucking with my plans." 

She smiles, and inclines her head.

"Yes, sir."

That smile follows James into blackness.

***

Valentine's day comes, and the world explodes - some of it only a little more literally than the rest. When the broadcast stops and the rage clears, Percival is struggling to rise to his knees in the lee of a smashed car withthe stonework of the building behind him. Pieces of broken headlamp, bumper, debris crunch under his hands.

The street is a mess of cars and debris and people-- and bodies. A shop alarm shrieks in chorus with a car horn, and Percival can hear human as well as mechanical distress. 

His phone rings, but the sound doesn't reach him. He reaches out to the person closest him, but the woman's throat under his fingers has no pulse. The man a few steps distant has no face. Percival stands and staggers, pain blooming out from his knee, hip, thigh. He stays upright only by virtue of the wall close at hand. Finally the vibration draws his notice and he braces his good leg on the ground and leans into the wall to retrieve the call. 

Roxy's voice and Roxy's explanation are so divorced from the London street in front of him that it takes a moment to draw any sense from it. "The signal is stopped. Cannot be restarted."

"It's stopped. Merlin and Eggsy are finishing clean-up, and we'll be back in a few hours."

"Excellent work, Lancelot. Please request Merlin call me when he can."

"Of course!" Her voice is happy -thrilled and flushed with success, with her first mission as a Kingsman. It's good to hear. 

His thumb swipes red across the face of his phone as he hangs up.

Moving closer, person by person, a police constable is checking the dead, the wounded. Her hair is half-ripped from its bun, and there's blood on her face. Percival wonders how many of those she's trying to assist are those she killed herself. How many are his own work? He slides his sidearm into its holster, and knows she tracks the movement. There's something in the back of her eyes, meeting his. Both of them are tasked with protecting these people. Both of them have failed. 

He steps forward to help. The constable's arm isn't moving right, and Percival can't bend down without falling, but she can crawl, and he can lift, and between them they extract a boy from beneath an overturned Toyota. She nods to him, and moves on. Percival carries the boy towards the cross street, where ambulance sirens are beginning to join the other alarms.

Saville Row is much the same. One of Kingsman's shopfront windows is cracked, spidering out beyond the handspan of Percival's reach. Impressive, given the reinforced grade of the glass. Thomas, who would have been manning the shopfront, is pulling down the shades as Percival enters, putting the place into lockdown.

Thomas' hands leave marks on the reinforced shades, and even on the shoulder of one of the display jackets. Percival does not point it out. They split up, Thomas clearing and securing the shop floor and the dressing rooms. Percival goes upstairs.

In the dining room Chester is dead. For an instant, Percival imagines him the origin of the stains on Thomas' hands. But no. The blood is dry. The body is too old, too stiff. Chester has been dead since last night, long before the morning's insanity.

Roxy said there had been a traitor, that was why she and Merlin hadn't contacted him until it was over.

Shah mat.

Percival leans heavily on the back of his own chair, draws it back from the table and sits down facing Chester's body. He taps his glasses to turn them on, to send the feed to Merlin. Adrenaline has faded, and cold and shock and pain are creeping up on him. He needs to know how much they've lost.

***

In the end, the world has lost a great deal. V-day becomes the new 9-11. Mr Unwin swears at the newscasters on the BBC until they switch to overseas feeds, whereupon Mr Unwin swears even more creatively. He's an unusual Kingsman, but a very competent agent, and between Roxy's approval and Merlin's, Percival is rather disposed to like Mr Unwin. They need good agents, now more than ever.

Percival himself is restricted from field duties, until the damage to his knee and thigh have corrected themselves. He works with Merlin, and acts as handler for Roxanne, for Lancelot, as she investigates the remnants of Valentine's subsidiaries. There are multiple hideaways. Some are abandoned. Some are full of headless corpses.

One is full of corpses, but also hospital equipment. And cells. There are some celebrities still unaccounted for, so he half expects to recognise the prisoner. But when Roxanne reaches the occupied cell, Percival's hand slams down on the alert that will call Merlin, because on the bench within, looking worn and watching Roxy with guarded intensity, is James. 

Roxy's intake of breath carries through the feed. "Is that-"

Percival manages an affirmative, and Roxanne picks the lock as Merlin comes in at a run 

Roxy introduces herself, by codename, and she's close enough now for the mic to pick up James' response. His voice is tired, rough, but the drawl of it lodges somewhere under Percival's breastbone and curls there, aching and hot.

"I see they've traded me in for a younger model."

Percival can see his smile, higher on one side, eyebrows quirked and inviting the laugh he can hear from Roxy on the other end of the line. Emotion is thick in Percival's throat, and he swallows against it. 

Merlin's hand is tight on his shoulder. Over his head, Merlin is telling Roxy how to check for any sign of Valentine's implants. 

Percival drinks in the unmarked line of James' jaw, the fall of his hair that needs trimming. The arch of his eyebrow that belies his passivity under Roxy's inspection. James opens his shirt to allow Roxy to see and scan the new scar tissue, and Percival catches his hand half risen from the desk, reaching towards the screen.

"Nothing at all. Clear, sir."

Tension drains out of him, and Percival can feel Merlin exhale behind him.

"Good. Good work, Agents Lancelot. Fucking hell. Come home."

James' startled laugh is the best sound since the end of the world.


End file.
